Secular Repentence

 9/10/2021--It came to me today, and I cannot further develop it right now, that in our efforts to build secular civilization--our great work, as Tom Berry might say--we have to have religious categories. One such category is prayer. Another, especially obvious during the Jewish Days of Awe, is repentance. I never hear anything about that from secular sources. But it is as necessary as tuning an instrument. 

Follow up column in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle

 7/3/2021--a guest editorial in the Jewish Chronicle--more on wearing the kippah.

Merry Christmas to All

 12/25/2020--Merry Christmas to all, especially to all of us nonbelievers. Christmas is the message of new hope that we need. Now if only we could frame myths for our own time.

Happy New Year

 

9/20/2020— Today is the second day of Rosh Hashanah in the Jewish calendar.I have not been able to write High Holy Day blog entries for a few years. This year was no exception.

But I would like to mention that one of the difficulties in establishing a really satisfying secular life is the absence of holy days.

For a Jew, the month before the High Holy Days, Elul, is one of introspection in preparation for the holiday period.

Then, there is the sense of possible new beginnings in the New Year itself.

When does the secular person engage in such introspection? When is the possibility of new beginning really present?

For us, one day tends to be like another.

It is not a problem yet solved. In fact, it is not yet a problem seen as a problem.

Mark Tooley on George Weigel/Judge Pryor on the Court of History

9/12/2020--I have this unfortunate tendency to lecture Christians on the meaning of the Gospel. As a self-professed non-believer, as a hallowed secularist, this must irritate believers. I don't blame them. It's just that I don't hear the Gospel preached. 

Two recent examples. 

Mark Tooley, the very thoughtful President of the Institute of Religion & Democracy, interviewed the Catholic thinker George Weigel on the theme Will America Choose Liberty or Anarchy? This drove me crazy. As if Trump represents liberty. Trump represents tyranny--ask any business owner he pushes around. As if the protests of people getting America to finally confront its racial sins represent anarchy. 

Justice looks like anarchy when you are in power. A man who enters by pushing on an infirm door gets an unjustified reputation for violence. What about the state of the door. (And a man who at 68 can still endorse his high school yearbook quote has obviously not learned very much in a lifetime). 

Anyway, I complained to Mark, whom I don't know personally and who took the time to gently remind me that Weigel did not support Trump, which is true. In 2016, Weigel urged people to vote for neither Trump nor Clinton. 

But this was incredibly bad theology. Trump represents a spiritual harm to the Church in a way Clinton never could--I don't care how pro-choice she is. In a Clinton presidency, the church, or much of it, would have confronted what it viewed as evil. It would have been wrong in many ways in my view, but it would have borne witness. In a Trump presidency, the church--its leadership and many of its congregations--have aligned themselves with the evils of power and in this way have shamed the Gospel. That is by far a greater harm. 

Say what you will about Hillary. She would never use a Bible as a photo op. 

The second example is 11th Circuit Chief Judge Bill Pryor, who wrote a separate concurrence in a case upholding Florida's requiement that fines be paid before felons could reclaim voting rights. 

The dissenters wrote that prior cases upholding votng rights "will be viewed as kindly by history." Pryor could not stand that. He wrote, There is no court of human history. 

South Texas Law Professor wrote favorably about this in Reason. 

Here is a fuller quote. Our duty is not to reach the outcomes we think will please whoever comes to sit on the court of human history. The Constitution instead tasks us with "administering the rule of law in courts of limited jurisdiction," id. at 1343, which means that we must respect the political decisions made by the people of Florida and their officials within the bounds of our Supreme Law, regardless of whether we agree with those decisions. And in the end, as our judicial oath acknowledges, we will answer for our work to the Judge who sits outside of human history. 

Professor Blackman writes that appeals to history "no longer have any meaning for me." They represent "mythology." 

This is the same nihilism that AG William Barr demonstrated when he was asked how history would view his decisions: "I am at the end of my career. Everyone dies, and I am not, you know, I don’t believe in the Homeric idea that, you know, immortality comes by, you know, having odes sung about you over the centuries." 

 Conservatives have now abandoned Martin Luther King, Jr.: the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. Oh, and I should add that in the Judeo/Christian tradition, God does not sit outside human history. When you abandon justice, you abandon religion too. I have no problem with a judge saying his role is to follow the law and sometimes not follow justice. But don't tell me there is no such thing.

On Watching Ben-Hur

4/12/2020—I used to watch the 1959 version of Ben-Hur with my children every year to celebrate Passover/Holy Week. But I haven’t seen it in years. Then I watched it last night.

It is a very good film still, with a great plot, marvelous acting, a love story and a happy ending. Oh, and very good action, even for today. The chariot race still holds up. (the perched camera never gets old, but the naval battle doesn’t get work and never did). And one of the greatest musical scores of all time, not just because the music is moving, but because it so aids in telling the story.

But what is astonishing is the sophisticated theological issues addressed. And the restraint with which they are presented.

I have never read the novel by Lew Wallace, but it is aptly subtitled “A Tale of the Christ.” Jesus appears infrequently and we never see his face. That plus the haunting musical line associated with him in the movie creates an air of mysticism and reverence. (This effect is lessened at the end of the movie, when characters try to describe him during his passion. The failure of that dialogue emphasizes the power of the earlier, understated treatment.)

Basically, the story of the Christ is told by the effect he has on the characters. From the first scene at the manger with the three wise men, to his interactions with his father, Joseph (“He’s working,” Joseph replies to a critical friend when the young Jesus neglects his carpentry and walks alone in the hills—-a quick case study in how to be a father.) to the moment that Jesus changes Judah ben Hur’s life by intervening with water in defiance of the Roman soldiers, the power and goodness of Jesus’s presence are shown.

The movie elicits piety without being preachy.

The movie also still speaks to a materialistic age. The early miracles are called “magic tricks” by a Roman official. But the teaching that God is in every man affects the official. The movie stops short of the resurrection, emphasizing the power of Jesus’s sacrifice to heal the world by ending on Good Friday.

But the greatest aspect of the movie is its serious treatment of the different way of life Jesus is presenting and practicing. Judah’s desire for revenge, which ultimately dominates every aspect of his life and closes him off to love, is entirely justified. But, on the other hand, the Roman government he hates is not presented as simple tyranny that must be resisted no matter what.

In other words, the world of the movie is the real world.

Into this world Jesus says forgive your enemies. Only his life and example make this simple admonition credible. Jesus changes the world right before our eyes.

A character says that Jesus took upon himself the sins of the world, but that is not what we see. What we see is overwhelming compassion and love that brings forth love and compassion in everyone it touches.

That love and compassion is real power. The movie does not argue that Rome is not real power, despite Messala’s claim that it is. It simply juxtaposes the two ways.

The movie does not argue that the normal way of the world is death. It shows us Judah becoming Messala by practicing the normal way of the world.

Who would not want to be a follower of Jesus after watching this movie?

Who would not wonder why Jesus has so few followers?

Secular Responses to anti-Semitic Violence

12/29/2019—This is not a blog entry about gun control. Of course it is morally permissible to kill someone who enters your home with a machete. And, since we live in a world where people enter your home with a machete, some people will want to have a gun for self-defense.

That said, it is jarring to read the response of Randy Barnett, the great conservative jurisprudential thinker, to the attack on a Jewish Hanukah celebration in Monsey, New York.

New York needs to join the 40 CCW states and pass “shall issue” concealed carry laws and Jews need to arm up & train. It’s not going to be a perfect solution, but nothing is perfect. As a Jew, this is one reason I both own and have my CCW permit, though I don’t *need* it—yet.

Randy thinks of himself as shooting someone who is threatening him or someone else. I doubt he thinks that doing so would traumatize him for life—-or, he might say, it would still be better than being dead.

I feel the same way. As I wrote above, this is not an entry about gun control.

But, now I think about the Hasidic Rabbi—-Chaim L. Rottenberg-—in whose home the attack took place. Is it so clear that he would want to shoot the man who entered his home with murderous intent?

For a secularist like me, death is the end. So, it is senseless to worry about tainting your soul with a violent but morally justified act to prevent being killed.

But, if I thought I would stand before God to account for all the actions of my life, then it would not be so clear. To kill to prevent others from being killed? Yes. To prevent my own death? Maybe not.

It is worth mentioning that this is exactly the kind of thinking that drove Zionists crazy during WWII and its aftermath. They were looking to create a society of Jews who would be able to act to defend themselves. And the policies of the current State of Israel are evidence that they succeeded. Israel is certainly a normal State in terms of self-defense.

The world cannot understand religious belief. This was shown in the general amazement at the reaction of the Amish to the murder of five children in Lancaster County in 2006.

Well, I can’t either. Not really. Let’s just say that the world will not be redeemed by more concealed carry gun permits.

But the world might be redeemed by something very different.

Christmas 2019

12/25/2019--Well, it's not 1862. Or 1941. Our country is more or less at peace--though the endless war keeps costing American lives. Our country is prosperous--though its economy is dependent on red ink and oil, neither of which can last.

But Americans are divided, as we have not been, perhaps, since the Civil War. And we face a peril that threatens all of humanity in climate change that has proved very difficult to deal with.

We are short on hope.

Secular society needs to hear the message of Christmas. The universe is on our side--on the side of life and goodness and truth. The universe intervenes in what science calls emergent phenomena, which miraculously bring forth new possibilities that are greater than the sum of what was present before.

Hope is anti-entropic.

So, although many of us are not Christians--we may follow other traditions or none at all--let us all celebrate the birth of a child who will be a savior. Out of unimaginable weakness, unsurpassed strength.

Merry Christmas.

Light in this Dark Season

12/22/2019—Timothy Egan wrote a column for yesterday’s New York Times entitled, There is Light in this Dark Season.

I thought the column was about Advent. It wasn’t. It was about secular acts, including politics. They were things that did not speak light to me.

It is always dark at this season. Dark for the short days—-in the Northern Hemisphere—-and dark because we live in a fallen world of violence and lies. Always.

That is the beauty, grace and hope of the Christian story. That is the light in this dark season. Jesus is always being born. A savior.

But, you may say, I don’t believe in Christ. I like the teachings of Jesus, but that’s all. Today, Nicholas Kristof answers, it doesn’t matter if you are a Christian. It matters if you are a follower of Jesus.

This is not a dumbed down message for a secular age. It was more or less the same message Karl Barth gave in 1911 to a labor union:

“If you understand the connection between the person of Jesus and your socialist convictions, and if you want to arrange your life so that it corresponds to this connection, then that does not at all mean you have to ‘believe’ or accept this, that, or the other thing. What Jesus has to bring to us are not ideas, but a way of life. …And as an atheist, a materialist, and a Darwinist, one can be a genuine follower and disciple of Jesus.”

Why Study Talmud?

5/4/2019—I’m reading a book at the suggestion of a friend, if all the seas were ink, by Ilana Kurshan. I’m only on page 42, but it is a kind of life affirming memoir of recovering from a bad divorce through a spiritual practice. (Think Eat, Pray, Study Talmud).

The thing not addressed, at least not yet, is, why study Talmud? I mean, why Talmud—that great compendium of Jewish learning. Kurshan notes the practice of daf yomi—learning a page of Talmud a day—as a kind of communal discipline. Jews everywhere are doing the same thing.

But nothing she tells us about what she is learning seems intrinsically enlightening. So, of all things she could do, why study Talmud?

I believe there is an answer to that question. But let’s set a few things straight. One does not study Talmud to learn Jewish law, that is, to learn what to do in terms of keeping the law. First of all, the Talmud is not just about legal issues. (One debate that creates a set piece in the book is the dispute over whether the line in the Bible about the Israelites missing free fish in Egypt referred to food or sex). The Little Talmud was created hundreds of years later, when the authorities decided that the Talmud should have been about law. So, they took out everything else.

Second, even the disputes that are about law—that is, what to do to fulfill the commandments—are often not resolved. As any lawyer knows, you don’t leave legal disputes unresolved.

Nor is Talmud study about keeping the Jewish people together. That is not what the rabbis were doing.

So, what were they doing? They were drawing closer to God. So, you study Talmud in order to draw closer to God—at least if you are being faithful to the rabbis who wrote the Talmud.

What in the Talmud allows one to draw closer to God? Not the content of the rules, which are never clarified, but the disputes themselves. The Talmud is about disputation.

How could disputes draw people closer to God? Jesus would say the opposite would be the case.

The Talmud is a celebration of rationality itself. A celebration of giving reasons and making arguments. God delights in these arguments.

On one level, that sounds like a celebration of cleverness and Jesus would be right that this leads to conflict and anger. But now imagine that reality is rational—think Hegel. The effort to think clearly then mirrors reality—the Talmud is a human imitation of ontology. The rational is the real.

It is the lifestyle of the academies, not their “results” that form a holy life. This means, ironically, that study of Talmud is not the main thing. Study is the main thing. A rational life.

Law school itself could be Talmudic life. Should be Talmudic life. The difference is the lack of holiness in law school. It used to be thought that the common law reflected God’s blueprint for humanity. That is the Talmudic spirit. A law school could be a new academy.

Building Cosmopolis

4/29/2019—I will have a conversation today with Michael Shermer, the author of The Moral Arc, and other books, for the Bends Toward Justice Podcast Series. Michael is a ferocious critic of irrationalisms of all kinds, right and left, from climate change denial to anti-vaccine people.

But Michael does have a particular critique of religion, which he repeatedly emphasizes.

From the perspective of doing something about irrationalism, this inordinate concern about religion is really counter-productive. There is so much good work about the meaning of God that does not involve miracle or any other interference with the laws of nature discovered by science—I am thinking here of David Bentley Hart, for example—that you have to ask someone like Michael, why pick a fight?

This leads to a larger question—how does someone like Michael actually engage irrationalism?

I hope to ask Michael about Bernard Lonergan, the Canadian Jesuit who died in 1984. Lonergan was the author of, among other books, Insight and Method in Theology. Lonergan was very interested in the kind of decline that we are experiencing now. He suggested that part of the response has to be cosmopolis, which is discussed here. Mark Miller describes cosmopolis as “a redemptive community that would motivate people on a cultural level instead of attempting through economics or politics to impose new social structures.” This community is not one that occupies a particular geographic area or is composed of any one profession or discipline. It is a loose formation of people from different walks of life who all see and confront the decline that is all around them.

Cosmopolis differs from the current opposition movements against President Trump. It does not have a program in that sense. It does not look for redemption from any such quarter. Its main focus is on the clarity of thinking. Even that, however, is a misleading formulation because, for Lonergan, thinking includes a form of life in Wittgenstein’s sense. It is as much a matter of character as of cognition. One could say that only a certain kind of person in a certain social context is really adequate to the emergency in which we find ourselves.

My question to Michael is, how to build cosmopolis? I don’t believe that the current form of criticism that Michael practices helps us get there. Dr. King was a person who could build community. Even if the moral arc is entirely a human creation, it still requires community. Secularism is really bad at this. But religion is really good.

God: the Bait and Switch

4/19/2019—When I first voiced frustration over the conception of God prevalent in every synagogue I ever attended, my friend and teacher, Robert Taylor, told me to “translate” this kind of God language into something more believable. But over time I just could not do it. We find today in the Settler movement in Israel exactly the danger of a conception of a God who can do something like give somebody else’s land to me. Many settlers say that God gave Judea and Samaria to the Jewish people and so it is their land and Palestinians who live there have no rights.

But this is not just the view of theologically unsophisticated modern people. The great Rashi taught that the Torah begins with the creation of the world to show that God owns the world and can give the land of Israel to anyone he chooses.

As Martin Heidegger might say, this is to confuse Being with a Being.

This kind of God, who acts in human ways and does things a human being could do if powerful enough and for human sorts of reasons, is exactly the kind of God that Christopher Hitchens made fun of in his book, God is not Great. He thought a lot of the conflicts in the world arose from differing views of what that kind of God had actually done. And he was right.

But Hitchens was criticized because he was describing an infantile view of God. It was the view of God I was taught and the one that seems to be at work in the Church, he claimed. He called the movement from one kind of God concept to the other, a bait and switch.

I am reminded of this because of Easter. C.S. Lewis once said that Christianity was one big miracle. And I agree. The issue for me was always the resurrection, which is why I never became a Christian, though I love Jesus and consider the New Testament to represent the best truth ever written by humans.

Of course, Lewis was also not a theologian. And indeed Lewis really did have multiple conceptions of God—he always said that classical philosophy and Christianity were importantly similar.

But a real theologian like N.T. Wright makes the point very clearly. The claim of Christianity is that the resurrection actually happened. Not metaphorically. Jesus rose from the dead, his lifeless body reanimated in a new way—and thus physically not in the tomb—and confronted and engaged his followers.

But this I cannot accept. Only the kind of God I also cannot accept could so this kind of thing.

Even the Gospel of Mark, which is careful not to dwell on the resurrected Christ’s actions, makes absolutely clear that the tomb was empty and that this was the work of God.

This is in large part why I left Judaism. The monotheistic tradition insists that God can intervene in physical ways, setting aside the usual laws of the natural world. For many of us, something else, and new is needed.

But, to the many millions—billions—of believers, God bless you. And a blessing to you on Easter and Passover.

The Universal Christ

4/7/2019--I wonder sometimes why my Christian and Jewish friends don't live fuller, more meaning-filled lives. After all, they believe in a wonderful reality of hope and love that I don't inhabit. Or don't inhabit fully.

Richard Rohr's book, The Universal Christ, is an introduction into everyday mysticism that attempts to capture just such experiences. We can be on the bus and suddenly we become award of the presence of God--aware of a hidden depth of reality right there.

The process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead taught that we were always perceiving God but that religious experiences were just that constant awareness occasionally coming into conscious awareness.

The point of hallowed secularism--this blog, my book, my hope for the future--is that this consciousness of the depth dimension of life, as described by Rollo May, could be a common inheritance.

Secularists just don't tend to talk about these things. That is part of the reason that secular life is so flat and unsatisfying. You need mystery and depth to live.

Rohr is a panentheist. I am seeing myself more and more as that.

Here is a review of Rohr's book.

Best Column Even by Thomas Friedman

3/10/2019--The column is Ilhan Omar, Aipac and Me. I especially like its reminder of the disgraceful Congressional invitation to Netanyahu over the objections of our President. The column appeared on Thursday, I believe.

What Will Post-Christianity Look Like?

12/14/2018—I guess I should ask, what does it look like, since we are already in it. The answer of course is that we don’t know. But Ross Douthat is wrong about one direction in may take.

Douthat wrote a column about paganism, which refers to Steven Smith’s new book contrasting Christianity—transcendent religion—with paganism—imminent religion: Pagans & Christians in the City. It’s a replay, says Smith, of an old story. Tony Kronman told a similar story in Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan.

But notice that both Smith and Kronman leave out a much simpler possibility—a secularized version of Christianity itself. This is something of the effort Tom Krattenmaker is taking up in his 2016 book, Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower. Krattenmaker describes that effort as “translating the language of Christianity to make it accessible, meaningful, and believable to me.”

Now why does Douthat leave this out? Why do Smith and Kronman? In the case of Douthat and Smith, it is because they are traditional Christians. Paganism is no threat, but any sort of transformed Christianity would be—-or so they might think. Tragically, they are not asking the question Paul asked, the question that Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked, “What is God saying now?” Douthat in fact already has named the movements of this direction a Christian heresy in his book, Bad Religion.

In Kronman’s case, it is the opposite problem. He is Jewish and has never known Jesus. He thinks he knows Christianity and is reacting against it. But he has no experience of the greatness of Christianity. If I remember his book, which I need to look at again, Christianity is a comic book.

No, there is no pagan revival. Any religious movement today will be Christianized or anti-Christian. In other words, Jesus is the starting point. An imminent Christianity, but with the magical imminence of Alfred North Whitehead and the being of Heidegger. Something like that. Pretending Christianity never happened is sort of ridiculous.

"I Retired

12/1/2108—I don’t believe I’ve told this story on HallowedSecularism. A few years ago, I was visiting the Children’s Museum in Pittsburgh with our grandchildren, when I was approached by a man who was clearly a Lubavitch on one of their Mitzvah Missions. “Excuse me,” he said politely, but are you Jewish?” “I used to be,” I answered. “You know,” he mused, clearly intrigued, “I have asked that question thousands of times, but I have never before heard that answer.”

What followed was interesting in its own right, but it is not my point here. Rather, the point is the story itself. I assumed that I was the only one who might have such a tale to tell.

Imagine my surprise today, therefore, upon read what was essentially the same story in a review of a novel. Francine Prose quotes the vignette in a review of three novels by the Guatemalan writer, Eduardo Halfon. Here is the story—-Prose does not identify from which novel it originates:

"I really remembered only three or four words and a random prayer or two and maybe how to count to ten. Fifteen, if I really tried. I live in the capital, I told her in Spanish, to show that I wasn’t an American, and she admitted that she was confused because she hadn’t imagined there were any Jewish Guatemalans. I’m not Jewish any more, I said, smiling at her, I retired. What do you mean you’re not? That’s impossible, she yelled in that way Israelis have of yelling."

Talk about art imitating life—although, the same thing might have actually happened to Halfon—-it is apparently not easy to tell where the novels leave off and real life begins, with him.

This is going to be my way of telling my journey from now on—I’m not Jewish any more. I retired.

Happy New Year

9/9/2018—Sundown today the holiday of Rosh Hashana begins—the birthday of the world, the birthday of the universe. This is the anniversary of the Big Bang, you might say. Time began today, although that concept is strange indeed.

In Jewish tradition, the entire previous month of Elul has been one of introspection. The Saturday night before, just some hours ago, the prayers for forgiveness, called Selichot.

Rosh Hashana is the beginning of the Ten Days of Awe, culminating in the fast day of Yom Kippur. During these ten days, one seeks out those whom one has wronged to ask forgiveness and to forgive those who ask for it.

The entire holiday is a kind of technology of renewal of the spirit.

Having been a participant, I attest to its power.

But I actually have never seen it work its magic on others—maybe renewal is hidden.

I suppose you could say that it is a time for rededication, but I think that understates the holiday’s potential.

Better to say that I give up my commitments. I don’t assume anything. I will allow the holiday itself to orient my life. I might go into the holiday a Republican and come out a Democrat. Or go into the holiday oriented toward politics and come out a person who listens to a different sound of life altogether.

As I say, I don’t expect any such thing. And I am not familiar with any literature in which such things happen.

But they have happened to me.

Happy New Year.

Israel Says It Cannot Be Both Jewish and Democratic

7/22/2018--I always said I would not be a critic of Israel since I don't live in a country surrounded by enemies who want to destroy me. But I am not criticizing Israel here, just pointing out what the Israeli government has just enacted. The government adopted a statute providing that Israel is the national state of the Jewish people. For this reason, Arabic was downgraded from an official language.

Obviously, any Israeli citizen who is not Jewish is now a second class citizen, as Arab members of the Knesset argued in their opposition to the bill.

There always was a tension in trying to be both democratic and Jewish. In a democratic state, if a new group gains a majority, they just take over the government. But, if a state is supposed to be dedicated to a particular religious group, what happens if someone else gains a demographic majority? If Muslims and Christians gained a majority in Israel, would they not be tempted to change he nature of the Jewish state?

But how can that be prevented if the state is democratic? For now the announcement is largely symbolic. But if Arabs threaten to become the majority, further steps will have to be taken to limit their voting rights.

It's not evil. It's just the tension between a religious state and a democratic one. The Israeli government is right--you can't be both.

Yes, the President Can Pardon Himself and This Court is Going to Vote for Religious Believers

6/5/2018—Two utterly unsurprising items in the news from yesterday. First, the President claims he can pardon himself. Here is the language of the Pardon Clause—"he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Not only is there no limit on the power, it is worded as if to remind us that the remedy for abuse is impeachment and removal. So, yes, he can pardon himself and then Congress should get rid of him.

The President is liable for state crimes, so he would have to shoot Comey in DC, in Giuliani’s weird hypothetical.

Second, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the baker. As I told my Con Law class, Justice Gorsuch was appointed to protect religious believers and that is what he is going to do, which means a majority to do that.

The theme of hostility to religion, or a non-neutral application of the law is interesting. The baker was cited for refusing to make a generalized wedding cake. Three other bakers were not cited for refusing to make a cake with a gay-bashing message. Although decided under the free exercise principle of a non-neutral law, I believe the case would go the same way if there were any other basis to refuse to make a cake. In other words, the law recognizes free expression rights in bakers making cakes. So, how can you distinguish any opposition by any other baker?

As for the anti-religion comments, these are the same comments a lot of people now make about religion in the context of religious exemptions—they are routinely called a right to discriminate, rather than a right of conscience. So, the Court still has respect for religion. But a lot of Americans do not.

Religious believers should remember that they are not practicing live and let live here. There are plenty of people who would love to revere the Obergefell same-sex marriage case if they could. Time for a grand bargain?

What Was the Most Radical Thing Martin Luther King Jr. Ever Said?

4/4/2018—On this solemn occasion of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. fifty years ago today in Memphis, people all over the world have taken the opportunity to reconsider King’s life and contributions. Much of this is political—an attempt to enlist King in various causes.

Nothing wrong with that. If people don’t know that King cared deeply about militarism and poverty, they should be reminded.

But I doubt that this aspect of his life is the most important.

Not even his dedication to nonviolence and loving engagement, although the very core of King’s being, is the most important thing today.

For, before King could engage the world in that way, he had to believe something very specific. He had to believe, as he apparently often said, that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

This is the message that our culture today desperately needs to hear. This is what we no longer believe. Sometimes, as in the case of the writer Rich Cohen in Vanity Fair, we actually say we no longer believe this. More often, we don’t think about it. We just assume in our materialism and nihilism, that the universe is cold and indifferent, if not hostile.

Not only confessed atheists doubt King. Plenty of people in the pews do also.

The reason that we today doubt King on this crucial matter is that God died. As Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw, that monumental death would take 1000 years to be understood and withstood. It is an open question whether a culture without a belief in God can survive.

It is because we no longer believe as Martin Luther King Jr. did that we hate each other. For if I believe the universe has an arc of goodness, I can, as King did, as Jesus did, love my enemies. For not only will I be vindicated, but I can hope realistically that my enemies will come to see the Truth of things.

But if, instead, the universe is forces and chaos, then it is my will to power versus the will to power of my enemies. We have to eliminate each other, one way or the other.

Of course, the catastrophe of the death of God does not reverse it. This culture will not just believe in God. I will not just believe in God.

That is not the end matters, however. For the question, as the Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan saw, is not whether God exists. The first question is whether the universe is on our side. There is plenty of evidence that it is. We have not yet seen the necessity of investigating Lonergan’s question in a serious way. He and King were seeing the same arc. I can see that arc.

Do religious believers have a stake in this debate within secularism? Certainly. For, as CS Lewis argued, the fundamental divide is not between religious believers and nonbelievers. The fundamental divide is between those persons who believe that goodness, truth and beauty are real and those who believe they are merely human projections.

I line up here with Lewis. Our culture will not be healed until we decide where we stand—with Lewis, Lonergan and King or not?